


Frostbite

by SilverButterfly111



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angst, Dark!Jack, Gen, Hurt Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21742687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverButterfly111/pseuds/SilverButterfly111
Summary: You don't go three- hundred years without demons....It had been waiting oh so patiently for him to come back...break the ice and let it out. It could make him numb. Nothing anyone could say would ever hurt Jack..would ever hurt them..again…
Comments: 1
Kudos: 96





	Frostbite

He had clawed his way out of that icy cavern that had been meant to be his prison or his safehouse. It was impossible to tell.

Pitch had betrayed him. He wasn't surprised.

The Guardians had shunned him. He was  _ bitter! _ Bitter and cold as the wind that stirred the dust like ash at his feet.

The dark and jagged spire of ice and dust gleaming even in the dark. Dark and bright all at once.

There was magic trapped in the tower of ice and darkness that he and Pitch Black had created during their battle...if it could be called that.

Jack could feel it.

_ What goes together better than cold and dark? _ Jack thought to him as he blinked up at the ice formation.

Hours wasn't a long time for magic to lay sleeping...but Jack could sense something different in the ice...that wanted out.

That reflected the pain that he felt at being abandoned and betrayed when he had dared to put enough faith in them in anyone!- and magnified it three centuries fold-

_ Why had he trusted them? _

_ Why them him? He had nothing to show for it besides being alone again- _

-That promised to protect him if he would just let it out of the ice. It had been waiting oh so patiently for him to come back...break the ice and let it out. It could make him numb. Nothing anyone could say would ever hurt Jack..would ever hurt  _ them _ ..again…

×××

"Why should I let you anywhere near him?"

The Guardians stumble-turned towards the childish lilt of laughter that was joyful and yet somehow so unsettling. The sort that your mind conjured at pictures of rotting houses.

"Jack? Jack!" It was Tooth that spoke up first. Squinting against the shadow and moonlight that made it difficult to pick out the lithe silhouette that clung to the edge of edge of the roof.

The boy swung his legs lazily over the apex of the roof. Heedless of the bone-shattering drop below.

Jack tilted his head into the light of the moon. A child who'd heard a name that should be familiar but couldn't be remembered. Was it really his name if the power that had gifted it to him had only bothered to tell him once.

The gaze that landed on the group of three former-immortals was fractured gray and blue, bright and hollow. Broken ice that opened to swallow and trap in cold and endless depths. Shards of a bright shattered mirror.

"Oh how the mighty fall!" Jack leaned over the edge of his perch. His lips pulling back to show his bright teeth.

Toothina saw them for what they were.

Bones.

"Is Pitch's fault." North concluded and though his normally booming voice rasped in his weakened state. Betraying a guess as to his true age- He sounded so convinced!-

The thing that wore Jack's face tilted his head back to the sky and laughed at the slim crescent of the Moon that he glimpsed behind the clouds.

"Pitch?! Why must everything be his fault?"

Those bright and broken eyes focused back on the Guardians. The weak light of the moon turning them gray as storm clouds.

"I never much liked the blame game; what if it's  _ yours, what _ then?" Jack asked. Tone that of a small child that had spoken a truth without regard for how much it hurt.

He swung his legs one more time against the eve of the roof and pushed off sending snow and icicles to the earth with the bell sounds of breaking glass.

Stalking toward them with a natural grace. Flickering from moonlight to shadow and back. The sound that gave him away was not the crunch of snow under his bare feet; but the wind that followed behind him. Quick and hissing akin to a snake that was only just kept at bay from biting with the gentle clear song of the snake charmer flute that was the boy's laughter. Taunting them as he leaned against the Bennett's mailbox in the absence of his staff.

His icicle-sharp grin just as crooked.

"Jack, just let us though, we're here for the same thing you are." Toothiana tried again to reason with the boy- because that was what he was now- just another nameless, faceless boy that they had forgotten about and she was sorry, so, very sorry. More than words could say; so she didn't say it. It was too late now anyway.

"Let you through?" Jack repeated. "And what?" He straightened up in his rage. Stepping into the moonlight and spreading his arms out before him. "Let you go and work your magic? Why should I!"

All three of them flinched.

"I haven't been on anyone's side, why should I start now? Why do you care about  _ him _ and not me? What makes one child more important than another?" Jack whispered. Musing in a way that sent chills up the Guardians spines.

"They all stop believing eventually don't they? No light can last forever."

That harsh and simple truth chilled them all to their fading Centers.

"What happens when Jamie stops believing you exist?" The snow elemental asked softly. The question posed in morbid curiosity of some naive child who had heard of the word death but lacked the harsh reality of how it happened.

What  _ would  _ happen?

Toothiana gave an appalled little gasp.

Was there another place? A place where spirits as ancient as them could go after wandering the Earth for so long?

Would Sandy be waiting for them there?

...It was only with the sudden sharp pain in her chest that she realized Jack had distracted them for their original goal.

Jamie was losing faith.

When she met Jack's eyes with a mute and begging plead she was surprised to see crystal shards of tears frozen to his skin.

"What did I ever do to hurt you! You wouldn't let me explain!"

The wind picked up with a mournful howling. Pushing them all six steps back. Bunny tucked his ears to his head and managed two and a half jumps against the gale. Green eyes bright with determination and remorse that seemed far too much for his small size and the situation at hand; but then again. He was the Guardian of Hope for a reason.

The shard of ice that landed a whisker length from his front paws had him frozen still besides a twitching nose to betray his fear.

"Don't come any closer." Jack's voice was low and cold, the air that stole warmth from the lost and the wary. Settled into their bones. "I gave up on you long ago." Now it was Aster who looked pained.

Jack lifted a hand into the air, pale skin appearing translucent like a ghost. In his fingers he held a red Matryoshka doll.

Tooth had never heard North cry before. Seen it yes but never heard it.

It was a heart breaking sound that made Jack flinch in shock. Looking guilty at the shards of pottery that stood out against the monochrome of shadows and snow and moonlight.

The hurt she saw in those muted eyes was far too much for her in all her power as the Guardian of Memories to ever recall that this was the same boy who laughed into the wind and fought with the strength and fierceness of a time very few spirits still on this planet would remember. She felt like she was drowning.

His voice echoed in her head the foreshadowing of this cold and broken creature that stood before them now. Bitter, Neglected and broken.

_ 'I didn't mean for this to happen…' _

And she believed him.

None of this, none of his actions are entirely his fault..he has a right to feel the way he does, after being neglected. He has a right to feel numb. They were meant to help him As much as he had been chosen to help them. And he'd tried so hard but in the end it had been them that failed…

And the others seem to realize this for the three reminding Guardians smile even as they turn to dust.

×××

Jamie Bennett is still wiping tears from his eyes when his next breath leaves him in more of fearful gasp then a sob.

"W-who are you?" He asked. Glaring suspiciously at the ghost sitting on his windowsill. The pale boy with blue-gray eyes blinks at him as if Jamie is the one who isn't supposed to be there.

Then he grins. Or at least Jamie thinks it's supposed to be a grin but it doesn't seem to be a happy one.

The boy with ash-gray hair lifts a pale hand and waves fingers tinted black with frostbite.

"Frost." He answers. And Jamie tilts his head with the faintest hint of hope in his voice.

"Frost? Like Jack Frost- Does that mean the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy and Sant-"

Jack is grinning and laughing, shaking his head with what Jamie doesn't yet know to be pity.

"Who needs them? We can have fun on our own." 

Jamie supposed that could be true...but it still would have been nice to have friends.

"I'm Jamie." He whispered after a moment. Because it's only fair that the ghost sitting on his window knows his name too. "It's nice to know at least one of you exists."


End file.
